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music video premiere: tim fite

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2010 |

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The extremely versatile Tim Fite recently released his latest album Under The Table Tennis (available now for free-ninety-nine on his website). Recently he teamed up with director Ryan Foregger to create a video for the album's final track, "We Didn't Warn You", and we've got the distinct honor of premiering it today.

The video pays tribute to the somewhat obscure legendary short film "A Day With The Boys", directed by Clu Gulager. Sexy Leroy brought the film to Tim's attention, who in turn passed it to Ryan as an example of the kind of cinemetography he wanted for the video. But the idea of the storyline resonated with the UTTT themes of the financial meltdown, and the pair decided to use the film as a jumping point. Several scenes, including the faux-climatic firing squad, are updated riffs on parts of the original. Foregger spoke to me about some of the difficulties of adaptation... "The original is almost 20 minutes, to fit that into 3 minutes was a challenge."

"Didn't Warn You":

Of course despite its relationship to what many would call an "art film", the video doesn't take itself too seriously, which helps it feel more authentically Tim Fite. Tim doesn't appear, but it still contains a large amount of his humor (especially in the adult characters played by Will Cart and Heidi Gardner). "Everything Tim does has a bit of humor in it, even though it comes from a serious place. I think that's really important in a music video as well. If you're message is serious, don't beat us over the head with melodrama using an art form that's greatest work is Thriller. I see a lot of music videos out there where they show us some poor person to try and make our hearts bleed, or do something like blast some gingers in the dessert to make some profound statement, but I think it's cheap. I could make a video where we throw babies out of cars all day and a ton of people would watch it and talk about it, but really what's the point? Unless the baby was wearing a funny t-shirt."

Foregger also made mention of the pratfalls of digging the graves for the climatic finish, a task that took nearly four hours, much to his surprise. "Yeah, if you're going to murder someone and you think you're going to need to get rid of the body quickly, definitely dig the grave ahead of time."